Saturday, December 21, 2013

Solta is a rocky island with a laid
back attitude and lots of laid back locals. We spend two nights on
the island in the town of Stomorska. We rented an apartment on
Airbnb.com and were pleased with our apartment ($53 USD a night) and
the view it afforded us (though the long climb up the hill was less
desirable). We ate in the restaurants, lounged at the seaside, and
wandered around the tiny town and neighborhoods. My husband even rented a bike for a day and rode
around the island. He had to take a bus to another town to rent the bike. But for
$10 for the day, it was an hilly adventure for him to enjoy while I
relaxed at the beach. There's also a bee farm on the island that makes
its own honey and helicopter rides offered along with other tours if you are so inclined.
It was also a popular place for yachters to park for the
night, plugin, and drink.

Split is a very touristy city, but
still worth visiting; but a warning would have been nice. Split is a hub
for cruise ships and bus travel so during the day it is filled with
people from cruise ships and people staying in town. I think if we
were to visit again, we would visit more islands in the area via
ferries during the day and enjoy the quieter evenings in Split. For
this, the ferries work well as their prices were relatively
inexpensive. Getting to one of the islands (Solta) was only about $6
USD for about an hour's ride.

The beaches near the Marjan were nice
and not too crowded. There aren't really long stretches of beach but
instead access to the water is broken up into different areas. It
works out so you can choose the area you want to hang out in (more
shade or deeper water or stretches of large rocks to sunbathe on). Note: The walk to this area takes about 20-30 minutes and there is not a lot of shade.

Like
the rest of Croatia, getting an apartment (apartman) in Split
was pretty common. They tend to cost less than a hotel room and we
were able to rent a small studio apartment for about 50€
per night which seemed to be the going rate for a studio or one
bedroom.

I have to admit that I was not
impressed with Makarska when I first arrived. For me it reminiscent of the overbuilt beach towns of Florida but with less Americans and
more Bosnians. There are apartment buildings everywhere renting
rooms, finding good food was difficult at best and the beaches were
overrun (and weren’t that spacious to begin with). But, once we
wandered into the Old Town, I warmed a bit. Overall, I would say that
there are better beach towns on the mainland of Croatian that are
less crowded (keep in mind we were there in earl September. I can
only imagine what it is like in the height of summer.)

For those who like the club scene,
there was a really cool club at the south end of the bay that is
carved out of a cave. There are also a number of bars that serve
some decent drinks. Some had live music that was pretty good, but
most were fairly standard bars.

About 20 minutes outside of Mostar is a
small town called Blagaj which you can get to by bus. There's a fortress on the top of the
hill there (locally known as Stjepan Grad) with amazing views of the surrounding area. The fortress is overgrown and dilapidated but that somehow makes it more worth seeing. You walk up a road (follow the one and only sign) and then hike up the switchbacks which takes a total of about 45 minutes. The trail is hard to find in the brush but the frustration is worth the view from the top and its free Note: keep an eye out for an arrow made out of rocks. We missed the arrow and spent a long time looking for the trail.

Also, there's a Dervish house at the base of a
mountain. There are restaurants
in the area because of the picturesque views of the cold, turquoise
waters coming out of the cave at the base of the mountain. You can
rent canoes there, but the water level seemed way to low for canoeing in September 2013.